Poor, Underpriveleged Yankees Receive Another Donation
So the National League tried to help out the poor defenseless Yankees before the season by trading them a quality starter for a marginal fifth outfielder, but so far it’s been merely an awful trade rather than a complete heist (although I bet Vazquez ends the year with an ERA+ well over 100 while Melky will still be Melky.) So I guess the Yanks needed more charity, getting an excellent hitter in a mild down year and cash in exchange for a “free Coke refill at Appelbee’s with $30 purchase” coupon. Man who should return to blogging Ken Tremendous summarizes the progression of the Astros’ “logic”:
- Astros paying Berkman’s salary is like a homeless guy getting robbed by a billionaire and throwing in a free shoeshine.
- “We want Berkman.” “Okay.” “But you pay him.” “Okay.” “In return, we’ll give you a pile of cat vomit.” “Okay.” “Now gimme your car.” “Okay.”
- “I will trade you negative four million dollars for Lance Berkman.” “Deal!”
- “We want Montero for Berkman.” “How about we give you nothing and you give us four million dollars and Berkman.” “Even better!”
I expect that by the time they formally announce the trade the Astros will have thrown in Brett Myers too. And the fact that now that Spec Richardson seems to be running the team from beyond the grave the Astros might challenge the Pirates’ losing streak record before they win again won’t be that much consolation.
There’s a lot of similar stuff in this ESPN article about their purchase of Austin Kearns, too.
Trying to decide which quote I prefer: “The Yankees got themselves an insurance policy without having to pay a premium, or in fact, anything at all, when they acquired veteran outfielder Austin Kearns from the Cleveland Indians on Friday night for a player to be named.”
OR
“Asked how either Kearns or Berkman, both middle of the order hitters, would fit into the packed Yankees lineup, Teixeira said, ‘I have no idea…’”
God, I hate the Yankees.
Well at least they are paying all of Kearns’ salary.
btw, rob, just to divert back to a subject of a couple of days ago, i happened to be looking at ortiz’ stats last night, and as an example of the slipping i mentioned, his career OPS against lefties is .801.
his OPS this season against lefties is .531.
Yes he isn’t the player of 2005-2007, but he isn’t the player of 2009 either. He’ll end up being worth around 3 wins, basically the same he was in 2008.
in short, he’s slipped: i’m not sure why you didn’t agree with that the other day.
But he slipped in 2008 so looking at 2009 for proof he sipped makes no sense.
rob, in that case, you misread me: what i said was that the first indicator that ortiz was slipping was that his performance dropped against pitchers with below 4.00 eras. bill james noted that prior to the 2009 season and it tracked back to 2007 as a leading indicator.
My god, you dare claim in the presence of a Tiger fan (me) that Ortiz is slipping? He’s been pounding us outrageously all season, including 7 9th inning rbis over the last two games . . .
:(
rea, admittedly, when rob and i first discussed this, i said that ortiz slipping meant that instead of being one of the 2-3 top hitters in the game he was now merely a very good hitter prone to streakiness….
I really don’t understand why the Indians made this trade. I mean, yeah, it dumps salary, but not a lot, and to get nothing in return…Shapiro’s usually made good moves with what he has, but this is a total and complete head-scratcher.
It depends on who the PTBNL is or how much the “cash considerations” are. It also depends on who they’re going to play as a result: it’s possible the biggest benefit to the Indians in this trade is the roster spot it opens up to give a prospect a major-league tryout without having to eat all of Kearns salary if they simply waived him.
Yeah, I guess that makes sense. You never know how that PTBNL will work out, and I certainly didn’t expect a high prospect from the Yanks in return (indeed, Kearns didn’t really merit a high prospect). Guess I have to reserve judgement until it all shakes out, and focus (for now) on how the apparently-imminent Westbrook trade will shake down.
And Kearns is the opposite of Berkman; he’s been decent this year but is coming off one poor and two ghastly years. So I can understand the Tribe wanting to take the money and run, and I wouldn’t bet a lot that he’ll help the Yankees much either.
kearns will net some at-bats against lefties that would have gone to granderson: he’s a minor upgrade as 4th outfielder.
we won’t even notice him unless he gets hot or does something dramatic, but he is an improvement.
Yeah, Kearns is an upgrade over Colin Curtis. And Berkman is an upgrade over Thames/Miranda. If we acquire a utility infielder who’s an upgrade over Pena and a reliever who’s an upgrade over whatever, the Yanks will have made a nice improvement on the fringes of the team without giving up anything of value. But nothing the Yanks do this trade season will improve the team drastically.
Then again, they don’t need drastic improvement.
And now the Yankees pick up injury-prone Kerry Wood, too, and agree to pay $1.5 million of his remaining salary. Wood and Park in the bullpen…I take back my questioning of Shapiro (who managed to trade Kearns, Wood, Westbrook, Peralta, and Branyan before the deadline, making the Indians younger and not paying), and now begin to question Cashman.
actually, scott, it’s been a complete heist.
since the 5/12 start (up to which point his ERA was 9.78), vazquez has pitched 84 innings with 29 earned runs allowed (3.11), WHIP of 1.02, and 10 quality starts out of 13.
don’t let those first 5 starts (23 innings) mislead you: he’s actually been outstanding since 5/12 (and that’s not mentioning the relief strikeout of youklis!).
Yeah, I’m not going to quibble. I hope that trade costs the Braves the postseason.
speaking of postseason, you’re leading in the bet right now (as you may recall, i have the yankees/red sox as both making the playoffs in order to win the bet, so you’re in good shape).
Hey the Astros are taking their time learning about this rebuilding thing. They have now gotten the first part of trading off older players for prospects down. Maybe by the time they trade Hunter Pence they;ll get it worked out.
That’s what makes it especially ridiculous; they held out forever to trade their two stars…for this? An OK-looking junkballer and two kids for Oswalt, and less than nothing for Berkman. Christ, why didn’t they just wait a few hours, put Berkman on waivers, and let him go if someone claims him and if not try to actually get something?
Berkman has 10-and-5 status, and can basically pick where he goes. Oswalt had a full NTC.
That explains why they didn’t get full value for Berkman, not why they got nothing. And the fact the Oswalt agreed to go to Philly without even getting his option guaranteed suggests the NTC wasn’t a big factor in his case.
They got 2 players and saved $3.5 million plus Berkman’s buyout for next year. If the reports that Berkman was going to reject a trade anywhere else are true, then they can’t get any more than that.
First, while I thought the Braves got too little in return for Vazquez, the real player they acquired wasn’t Melky but Vizcaino, so saying the trade was a heist because Melky sucks isn’t really fair.
Second, as far as I know, we don’t yet know what the Astros are getting for Berkman. The rumors are that it’s not a “significant” prospect, but what does that mean? It’s possible that means “Not Montero.” But if they got, say, Nova and Laird, or Noesi and Adams, that’s not a great return but it’s not nothing. (Both pairs include a near-ready pitcher with mid-rotation upside and a AA infielder with offensive potential. The Yankees, while weak at the moment in elite talent at the farm, actually have a whole lot of these second tier prospects.) Of course, it’s also possible that even these sorts of prospects would be considered “significant” and the Astros actually got much less. (Juan Miranda and random single A reliever?)
Shhhhhh, pay no attention to the Top 100 Prospect in the deal, or the fact that Atlanta had to cut payroll and (obviously) couldn’t con anyone into taking over Derek Lowe’s contract. The Braves clearly just wanted to acquire Melky’s extreme walk-off skills.
Right, I think some people are so wedded to the idea that everything the Yankees do is evil that they overlook objective facts at times. Vizcaino was a top pitching prospect and made the deal far from lopsided, though I would have expected the Yankees to also have to surrender a second, lower tier prospect as well for someone who was one of the best pitchers in the NL last year. (Dunn for Logan as the rest of the trade was kind of a wash: a younger, higher upside lefty for a major-league ready lefty.)
They ate all of Vazquez’s salary, which was what Atlanta needed more than anything.
I dispute the idea that the Braves “had” to cut payroll. They chose to do so, and in so doing may well have cost themselves postseason revenue. Vazquez was a good investment at his salary.
look, if a “pitching prospect” pans out, great, we can go back and re-evaluate.
meanwhile, what counts are wins and losses at the major league level, and vazquez has, since may 12, been one of the better starters in the league (10 out of 13 quality starts takes you up to elite territory if you can do it all season), whereas melky has been…melky (which is to say, he was a nice 4th outfielder himself).
What are you basing your dispute on though? There were all kinds of reports that they had to cut their payroll at the beginning of the offseason, because they drastically overextended themselves for Derek Lowe. They wanted to dump Lowe and couldn’t get anyone to take his salary. The only guy they could deal worth any payroll was Vazquez.
You’re missing my point. Yes, if you accept the premise that the Braves had to respond to signing a bad contract by getting rid of a good contract, then the trade is better. But I reject the premise. Salaries are investments, not just expenses. And Vazquez is a better deal than Cabrera even though Cabrera is cheaper. Unless the Braves were just unable to obtain financing or something (which is implausible in the extreme), the trade was terrible.
And once again, Scott, you ignore the key player in the deal. It wasn’t Vazquez for Cabrera. Now, you could argue that the Braves are close enough to being a contender that they shouldn’t be trying to acquire prospects, but they did, and they got someone who was a consensus top prospect. (On the other hand, I agree with you that the Braves shouldn’t have been looking to shed payroll.)
Well, now we know what the Astros got and it more closely resembles the last possibility I offered. Melancon might be a decent reliever and Paredes is kinda young and has some stick for a SS but isn’t anyone’s idea of a good prospect as far as I know. If the Astros really are picking up most of Berkman’s salary, this is a steal even if Berkman ain’t what he used to be.
Oh, and it’s even worse than I thought: Paredes has already been moved to 2B and has gotten some playing time at 3rd. If he’s not a SS, he’s not much of a prospect.
Oh yeah, they got hosed on Berkman, but I think the Yankees were the only team Berkman would accept a trade to. It’s already been reported that he was going to reject a trade to the White Sox.
So don’t trade him, then. Hell, just put him on waivers and see if someone bites; if so, you’ll be better off.
And then what? No one is going to pick him up off of waivers and take that contract, he’s not going to net them any picks because they wouldn’t offer him arbitration (and he’s probably a Type B anyway), and then the Astros get stuck getting nothing back for him at all plus paying the rest of his salary and the buyout.
Well, if nobody would pick him up off waivers (which I wouldn’t assume), they could make the same trade next week anyway, so there was no reason to take nothing in return.
Yeah, I was assuming that it was basically for Melancon, which would be dubious even if the Yankess were actually eating all of Berkman’s salary and is ludicrous when they’re not.
Well, fair enough, but a 19 year old pitcher who ranks #69 on the BA prospect list…I agree that’s not nothing, but the odds of him panning out also aren’t very high, and it doesn’t do much to compensate for the loss of one of the rare guys who can actually pitch 200 innings a year at a high level. If the Braves weren’t contenders this year the trade would be OK — it’s worth collecting some young pitching prospects and see if you can get lucky on a couple — but for a team that can win…bad trade.
And Kevin Goldstein at BP rates him a 5-star prospect, 2nd best in the Yankee system before the trade, 3rd best in the Braves after the trade, and the 45th best in baseball.
I agree with you that given where the Braves were in the probability of contention, they shouldn’t have made the trade. And even making the trade, I think they should have gotten another prospect as well to even it out, a 3-star type prospect not a top one. But this wasn’t a “donation” and it wasn’t horribly lopsided, just somewhat tilted in the Yankee’s favor.
As opposed to the Berkman trade, which is quite a lot tilted in the Yankee’s favor.
I agree that the trade is much better than the Berkman one.
After the Oswalt trade there were lots of jokes on Philadelphia sports blogs about how Houston was our AAA affiliate (see also Lidge). But now I see the Yankees are poaching! No fair! Don’t they have Kansas City anymore?
Seriously, though at this point I’m having a hard time disputing the accusation that the Phils have just decided to become the NL Yankee’s, I mean its gotten to where I’m citing a dumb move (getting rid of Lee) as an example of how the Phils aren’t just buying the pennant.
By getting Oswalt for nothing and getting Houston to pick up half of the money he had left guaranteed?
Seriously, baseball fans can be some really whiny babies sometimes.
That’s unfair…to the poor A’s, who often got real value back from the Yanks when they traded veterans.
These are Ed Wade deals. They always transcend credulity.
I know I’m a day late, and a dollar short, but, here goes:
Jesus, I’m embarrassed to be a Yankee fan this morning.
This was grand larceny, on all 3 deals – Kearns, Berkman, and Wood.
But, then again, no one else pulled these deals off, as embarassing as they were.
What were the Ray’s THINKING? I know Berkman was a 10 & 5 guy, but, why not try to get Dunn? They have great pitching, and a real thumper would have gone a long way to getting them ahead of the Yankees. Hell, even Kearns would have helped them…
For those of you Yankees haters who want to scream about this, just remember that this is just another case of the them getting players they needed since Ban Johnson steered players to them the moment they moved from Baltimore, to create a strong AL NY franchise.
A short list:
Hal, ‘the most corrupt player ever’ Chase.
Jack Chesbro.
Ruth, and the rest of the Red Sox who comprised the early-mid 1920′s Yankees.
Johnny Mize.
Country Slaughter.
etc., etc., etc……………………
Sometimes it’s tough to be a Yankee fan.
The rest of you will just have to take my work for it. Sorry…
According to the Mets broadcasters, unlike the Astros the Nationals weren’t willing to take less than nothing for Dunn, so they’ll wait and try to move him through waivers instead, and if not try to re-sign him.